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Doing the first little post on this site about the mommy garden space made me remember that I like blogging, so, last week I went out to my friend’s garden, in Houston, to see what was happening in the life of a real urban permaculturalist . . .

Once I saw Mickey demonstrate to a group how to start a camp fire by rubbing two sticks together. He made it look easy, but, have you ever tried to do that?

. . .. IT’s hard!

Putting together a Permaculture garden on a budget requires so much resourcesfulness, you’d be assured that anyone who pulls one off is a bad ass!

And he says he didn’t even stick that sticker on the filing cabinet, he says it came that way when he picked it up off a curb from someone’s heavy trash! He brought it to his garden to help organize his beekeeping tools!

that’s BAD ASS!. . .

Permaculturalists see the world in different ways than many of us, in that they are always looking for things that they can use to better their permaculture experiments. .

For instance, this garden bed is slowly being formed from Flowstone, Urbanite and Silica!. . . .

I started to jot down all these stone names in my book so that I could go make one, but silly me, those are just fancy terms for concrete!

Yes, recycling conrete for a garden purpose! There’s a novel idea. .

But there are more ways than one to build a garden wall!. . .

Winter here is mild, and lots of citrus! …

Kumquat, Loquat. . .

Ujukitsu!. .

You could go overboard planting citrus! It’s easy to do that here in Houston!

Papaya. . .

(the bottom one’s ripe).

It’s kind of hard to see, but if you look across the tops of these, you’ll see that every tree is different!. .

Avocado.

Fig Tree…. It’s winter now.

Stevia plant!

It was fun to look around and see things like the end of the loofah! . . .

Here is a loofah fruit still hanging around from last season. . . (loofah is actually a goard and a vegetable!)

Once I had some loofah seeds that someone gave me, so I traded them to Mickey for a few nice planter pots and a fish bowl, and then he planted the seeds, and in a few months he brought me a box of loofah, which, I still use in my bathroom and all around my house!
Mickey is still producing loofah on this arbour that he scavenged from Levy Park when it was shutting down.

When you first arrive at the Mommy’s Cupboard future garden space you will notice that our work awaits us …

Planning a permaculture garden, first we must spend time observing the space before we make a design. Nature is a teacher, and finds the best ways of doing things on it’s own, so, in order to not work against it (and ourselves) we observe the ways natural energies are already interacting with our space.

. . .

Listen and notice the flow of the breeze, and notice from which way the afternoon sun shines! …

There is a lovely Pecan Tree in the corner of our space, with ripe pecans this time of year! Our first sweet harvest! . . .

There is a lovely live oak tree off the property that has a large shade-producing canopy ..

..a colorful basketball court behind!

More views …

There is much to be done. . . dreams are free!

And with hope, the sky’s the limit!. . .

Share with us in this journey toward healthy lifestyles and better eating for all!!

Have any thoughts are comments? Please post them to us! We value the insights of all our mommy and gardener friends!

Thanks for taking our online garden tour!

Mommy’s Cupboard was inspired by that Last Organic Outpost and all of our friends!…

Mommy’s Cupboard is a permaculture based market garden and education center dedicated to serving low-income, new, and expectant mothers. Our vision is to increase positive and healthy maternal and pediatric outcomes by focusing on natural fresh food production, nutrition, and community connectedness through childbirth and early childhood development education. In addition Mommy’s Cupboard serves as a homestead education and sustainable living demonstration space.

Why mothers in 5th Ward and Denver Harbor?

Highest infant mortality rates

High rates of infant malnutrition in low income communities

Low breastfeeding rates among African American and Hispanic communities

Food insecurity/food desert

African American women are 4 times more likely to die from childbirth than white women

Hispanic women are 2 times more likely to die than white women

High need for pre- and postnatal maternal and infant support in low income communities.

Mommy’s Cupboard will operate on a 5,500 square foot lot nestled in the beautiful 5th Ward community at 0 Arapahoe St. between Calles and Finnegan Dr., Houston TX 77020